More than 200 people converged as part of a campus-by-campus campaign from San Francisco to San Diego to fight imminent cuts.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed $386 million less than the amount California State University trustees say they need in 2008-09. This includes an assumed 10 percent student fee increase in the nation's largest public, four-year higher education system. The CSU serves about 450,000 students on 23 campuses.

“Student loans, working multiple jobs, providing for a family while taking a full class load, attending night classes after an eight-hour shift at work. . . . This is reality to most of the students within the California State University system,” student government president Caitlin Gelrud told the packed campus theater. “The price of attending a CSU campus has risen astronomically in the past few years, and with the state budget proposed by the governor, the students will see another fee increase for the 2008-09 academic year.”

This budget reduction follows about $500 million in system cuts between 2002 and 2004, said Janet Powell, president of the California State University San Marcos faculty union.

CSU Chancellor Charles Reed already has announced that the system will be unable to admit 10,000 additional students expected next fall.

“That's equal to us closing Cal State Los Angeles and Cal State Dominguez Hills,” Powell said.

Enrollment at Cal State San Marcos – 9,159 last fall – would remain at current levels.

Event guests were asked to sign pledge cards to help fight the cuts. 

by Sherry Saavedra, San Diego Union-Tribune, March 11, 2008